Gee, Deus Ex Machina AGAIN? Who suspected THAT might happen?

[theweaselking]

I am officially done with Doctor Who.

Regeneration-based DEM *again*? After the main promise that Moffat made was that the Rusty Davies idiocy was over and the "regeneration fixes everything" and "deus ex machina fixes everything" would stop being the solution to EVERY SINGLE EPISODE?

Yeah.

This episode says "Fuck THAT" with a huge exclamation point and a lovely giant "fuck YOU!" to any fan over the age of 8.

It's Torchwood-level bad, and promises to continue being so.

NEXT?

Comments

[crazy-alexy.livejournal.com]

SPOILERS, man! Some of us don't have cable, and have to wait for the uploads to start online.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Don't waste your time, it's Torchwood-level stupid.

[crazy-alexy.livejournal.com]

Still, it would be nice to see that for myself, rather than having it posted on my fl without any warning.

[whisperkit.livejournal.com]

This is a valid point.

[evilgrins.livejournal.com]

Where do you get your uploads?

[crazy-alexy.livejournal.com]

http://watchseries.eu/serie/doctor_who

[evilgrins.livejournal.com]

Got a good link for Torchwood Miracle Day? While I've heard bad things, I haven't seen episode 8 yet and I wanna get caught back up.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

eztv.it

[evilgrins.livejournal.com]

I'm completely unfamiliar with torrents. How do i play their files?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

The .torrent file is a list of places to connect to to download from other people sharing the same file. a torrent client, like utorrent or bittorrent, uses the file and does all the heavy lifting.

When it's done, you have a standard movie file.

[evilgrins.livejournal.com]

so it downloaded a player and a download utility and nothing is happening

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

http://www.ehow.com/how_2054135_use-utorrent.html

[evilgrins.livejournal.com]

thanks

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Also: You know that Doctor Who at its worst is both unwatchably stupid *and* about the level of Torchwood at its absolute best, right?

[evilgrins.livejournal.com]

I don't care, I like both of them

[torrain.livejournal.com]

With you on this. I like them on different levels, but I like them.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Also: "It's a Deus Ex Machina ending" is not a spoiler for any New Doctor Who episode, since it's the most common ending.

The "Deus" is regeneration is only a spoiler in that it's only about 50% of the DEM endings

[corruptedjasper.livejournal.com]

Exaggeration: it's an art form.

[whisperkit.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I thought it was a bit too convenient how River used up all her remaining regenerations on the Doctor. And the sudden personality turnabout in one episode. They could have made it a gradual thing where she gets to know him/does a bit more mental sparring. That was fun. But they cut it short so fast with artificial drama (Regeneration disabled by poison? Whatnow? Regeneration gives you superpowers? Robot jellyfish are scary when you have a sonic screwdriver..?).

Still, I found it enjoyable despite it's flaws.

[coyotegoth.livejournal.com]

Moomins! :D

[drjon.livejournal.com]

YES! MOOMINS FTW!!!

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Regeneration gives you superpowers?

Established way back in the first Christmas special - regeneration takes hours to complete, and in that time you keep regenerating and can fix things like having your hand cut off by a space alien.

The bit about "you can't regenerate, so I can regenerate for you and also this will use up regenerations and we can tell how many there are left and and and and and and and" is terrible writing, lousy worldbuilding, and deus ex machina to avoid having to think of an ending that makes sense.

Robot jellyfish are scary when you have a sonic screwdriver..?

Who the hell puts a security system like that into their time-travelling Hitler-killing space robot?

[whisperkit.livejournal.com]

It was more the "I kill Nazis with my mad regeneration powers!" and using it to heal the Doctor that bugged me. I was dimly aware that there was some leeway, but hadn't seen the Christmas special, so my knowledge there may be lacking.

I didn't mind the Antibodies. They're a stupid security system, sure, but considering the ones we've seen in the past in Who (Smilers in Starship Britain come to mind) they make more sense. I don't tend to read Who as trying to be hard scifi, so I let things like that slide. Having a Thing That Fucks Up Devices and going "Oh well, these robots are going to kill us now". without at least some acknowledgement ("No, they're kryptonite robots." or the like) annoyed me.

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

Who the hell puts a security system like that into their time-travelling Hitler-killing space robot?

The same people who, while on a time travelling "five year mission to boldly kill hitler as no hitler has been killed before", fail to check the date until after they'd offed a few high ranking nazis and were in the middle of killing hitler.

To be fair, it's also a failsafe way to ensure you don't end up giving nazis and other war criminals super time travelling miniturising robot tech, especially as they were sucking up nazis all over the place.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I was really really disappointed.

I can occasionally overlook the bad parts of a show or movie. I hate to find myself overlooking everything except Rory punching out Hitler. And a stealth-robot Nazi.

...Rory was pretty awesome, though.

[iblis-kukl.livejournal.com]

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Hint: World War II was happening when they met Jack Harkness.
They didn't un-meet Harkness as of this episode.

[almostwitty]

What I love is that the title was designed to draw in casual viewers with a "Hrm... how do they kill Hitler?" thing, and then literally leave Hitler alone in a cupboard while they get on with the ever-convoluted sci-fi soap opera thing that confuses hard-core fans, let alone newbies.

I'm going to have a hard time explaining this one in the office on Tuesday.

[sbloyd.livejournal.com]

I was going to post about how it felt like they devoted an entire episode to answering a plot question and how I felt it was wasteful, but a decent episode. In reflecting on the episode in the process of typing, however, I came to realise how much I disliked 'Let's Kill Hitler.'

I think the excitement of "Doctor Who is back! Woo!" made me overlook the bad writing.

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

It's Torchwood-level bad

You clearly either haven't seen the new depths of torchwood-bad in miracle day and are also misremembering how bad torchwood was in the olden days as well.

Let's check the "why torchwood sucks" checklist:

[ ] horrible migraine inducing camera work
[ ] bad direction
[ ] inconsistent characterisation
[x] mary sue character
[ ] writing and dialogue that make me want to STAB ALL THE CHARACTERS!
[ ] horrifyingly corny lines
[ ] neck snapping tone shifts
[ ] misuse of incidental music
[X] dodgy gender politics
[ ] dodgy racial politics
[ ] dodgy sexuality politics
[ ] childish use of gratuitous sex/violence
[ ] annoying time wasting filler scenes (possibly involving chelation)
[ ] good actors being made to give a poor performance
[ ] bad actors not being restrained from giving a bad performance
[x] DEUS EX PTERADACTYL
[ ] TEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEETH
[ ] distinct lack of nazi punching

and remember that you need at least six ticks for a fair comparison between anything and torchwood. So less with the unhelpful hyperbole please.

My problems with the episode were simply that it seemed really really compressed, like moffat wanted to spread the song story out a bit more like how he handled the sally/roger storyline in coupling, and instead got geoff stuck on a flight to lesbos. I would have been fine with ending, even if it was the same ending, if it hadn't been "oh, the doctor is totally going to die, like whoah is he going to die a lot" and then "nope.jpeg" a few minutes later in far far too perfunctory fashion.

And also in a story with morphing identity stealing robot-time-ships, you could have had A LOT of hitler killing, with the main cast spending the entire thing doing nothing but trying to kill "hitler" while the original is stuck ignominiously in a cupboard. Think of "the cat came back", BUT WITH ROBOT HITLER INSTEAD OF A CAT.

ALSO: The Doctor better fish river out of that fucking library at some point. The more moffat builds Song up as a character, the more her death in the library becomes the equivalent of superman being punked out by a switch blade weilding mugger who's knife accidentally had some kryptonite on it and then DC as a company folds immediately afterwards and superman is stuck dead from glowing green punk stabbage FOREEEEEEEEEVER.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Inconsistent characters, writing that makes me want to STAB THE WRITER BECAUSE IT IS STUPID, Annoying filler EPISODE not just scene, bad actors unrestrained, NOT ENOUGH NAZI-PUNCHING.

In addition to at least five points for "Regeneration fixes everything AGAIN because MAGIC AGAIN after clearly establishing that Regeneration isn't good enough AGAIN because magic AGAIN"?

They're WAY over the Torchwood Minimum.

Terrible show is terrible.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

[X] inconsistent characterisation

Like treating your/your wife's lifelong friend pointing a gun at the Doctor as nothing more serious than a joyride?

I mean, come on. Raise your hands if you would not have expected Amy to be a bit more upset about anyone else trying to kill the Doctor. Like Rory. There would have been actual emoting on that screen if it had been Rory or people would know the reason why.

[?] dodgy racial politics
[?] dodgy sexuality politics

Okay, I'm sorry, but River's let's-hit-all-the-holocaust-buttons line to the Nazis? That was embarrassing to even watch. Yes yes yes, the unkillable psychopath[1] is absolutely on the side of all the poor downtrodden-- oh, no, wait, she was just bringing all this up to piss off the Nazis, which is not dismissive or belittling at all.

[X] annoying time wasting filler scenes (possibly involving chelation)

Oh hey, Amy, your life-long friend who we've never seen before is here! Okay, now she's kidnapping the doctor. Okay, now she's secretly the lifelong deep-cover programmed stealth assassin. Okay, your best lifelong friend is dead and since River Song is such an established character everyone will treat her as River Song and there is no attempt made to reconnect with Melz. It's okay, she killed the Doctor so now she's back to being regular River Song. Oh, and by the way, the only thing we get in the way of the Doctor reacting to people who can go back in time to stop terrible monsters throughout history and instead choose to take them and torture them after they've already done terrible things is "Well I know who you think you are."

For the love, the only thing that episode did was explain why River Song didn't regenerate when she was killed in the library. Filler. Filler filler filler.

[X] good actors being made to give a poor performance

The Doctor was dying slowly and Amy was watching her best friend since forever get shot and Rory and Amy were finding out their daughter had become a monster and I didn't care. For the love, the second episode of Misfits got a more emotional reaction.

[X] distinct lack of nazi punching

Rory punched Hitler. That was it. I will give you Rory also punching the shape-shifting time-travelling death robot that was dressed as a Nazi, and in fact think he was the best part of the episode, but a full episode in 1938 Berlin with two Nazis punched? That is a distinct lack of Nazi punching. Not a total lack, but seriously.
---
[1] Not arguing with the episode over that term right now.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Don't forget that the killer assassin who *just might secretly be out to murder you* is the only non-white character.

[rickbooth.livejournal.com]

I gave up on Dr Who a while back (just before the last regeneration). This was not a good episode to choose to see if out had improved, it seems. Most disappointing.

[fatpie42.livejournal.com]

Why is nobody asking the big question here?

Regeneration is magic. No shit, really?

A regular character who randomly appears all over the place during the series, randomly appears in Amy and Rory's past. - Yeah, not a problem.

Miniature people surrounded with robots who could kill them at any moment haven't got a tip-top operation going on. Uh-huh, you do know what show you are watching right?


No, the real question is "why doesn't River Song know her own name?"

And no, it's not obvious that she'd call herself Melody. The people who brought her up apparently don't even KNOW the name Melody. Their nearest word is "Song" and their nearest word for Pond is "River". That's supposed to be the reason for her name in the first place. Why was she ever called "River Song" if this language issue never actually came up during her childhood?

[jack-ryder.livejournal.com]

I was under the distinct impression Moffat had just handed the director his first draft by mistake. Maybe he's got Ann Rice syndrome and has evolved into a writer who is beyond mere editing.

What a terrible episode.